All Roads Lead to Empty Mountain

First pic of us on our soon-to-be land

Saturday June 25th, 2022

Mike left early this morning with the car. He’s helping a buddy of his with a construction job in Helena and will be back sometime tomorrow night. I’m parked with the van in our fave (undisclosed) spot for overnight parking around Missoula. It’s nearing noon o’clock and I’m sitting outside, using the van as shade from the approaching sun. Despite how early the sun rises these days, the direct light of it didn’t find the van until 9:14am. 

I continue to find the dynamic situation of the temperatures in the van a wonder. It was 48-degrees in the van at 5am. (Side note: On April 1st, when I started my van life journal, I reported that it was 41-degrees in the van. Yeah, so, almost 3-months later and not that much diff in morning temps, despite the fact that our daytime temps are significantly higher. Amazing.) I started up our portable propane Mr. Buddy Heater to take off the chill. Once the sun made it’s way to the van from over the mountain, it heated up super quick. Fast enough that the foam insert I removed to warm up the van via radiant heat soon had to be placed back into the window to keep the sun out. Never in my life have I been so acutely aware of the temperatures on such a regular and ongoing basis. 

In less than a week from now, we’ll be closing on the 24-acres near Superior, Montana. Ya know, if all things go according to plan. We did our best to do our physical due diligence on the land in the short time we were allotted. We even got an extension so we’d have a little more wiggle room. Some of our Q’s are still lingering, but we decided after all of the phone calls and emails and swimming in a sea of logistics like survey maps and documents that were not designed for the average lay person to understand, we’d just roll the dice and make whatever happens work. We’re both hella tired and spent from this whole process. We feel lighter, now that we’ve decided to move forward with the purchase and just call it good. 

Yesterday, we picked up a big wall tent from a friend of ours who’s letting us borrow it until he needs it for hunting season. We’ll look to erect it on the land after we close. It has a wood stove with it as well, which with these chilly mornings will be nice to have. We might still just sleep in the van on the land too. We’ll see what we do. Either way, the wall tent will come in super handy for having a place to store and put things temporarily, and perhaps serve as an outdoor kitchen place as well. Note to self: Remember to get bear spray. Also: Store all food stuffs in vehicles or bear proof bins. Bears will soon be our new neighbors. We saw a big black bear just a couple miles down the road from the land, when we took a drive to check out the nearby National Forest area last week.  

Now that land living is an approaching reality, we’re beginning to invest time and energy into researching such things as: larger capacity water storage containers for hauling water; generators for running tools; solar power systems for charging our devices; satellite internet; mobile boosters; and other living-in-the-woods-off-grid-style accessories such as: solar camp showers; solar lights & lanterns; foot pump operated sinks; small propane refrigerators; and outdoor sun shades & furniture. I’ve also been seriously considering getting a large trampoline. I mean, who doesn’t want to have some tramp time when they come to visit Empty Mountain? We want to have some fun stuff for folks to do too!

Mike’s idea of a good time right now is starting to figure out the first build he’ll do on the land. My idea of a good time is starting to think about the first Empty Mountain weekend we’ll hopefully look to host this summer. Organizing events and gatherings that bring people together and coming up with a schedule is my happy place. I’m thinking we’ll have a weekend maybe in August where folks can come from Friday-Sunday or just on Sunday for the day, with a mixture of practice related programming, unstructured social hang time, fun activities, and R&R in the woods. When Mike and I are able to combine forces, we make a pretty swell team.

This is us soon to embark on the joint venture of Empty Mountain, and hoping others will want to join us in the adventure!